We're down in Wilmington for the weekend. Others will have better write-ups in their livejournals so I won't try to compete, but I will say that Tommy's house is very hospitable.
I began reading Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point on the way down. I got as far as the chapter about connectors. Connectors are people who bring other people together. In the chapter he describes an extraordinary connector who goes to great lengths to keep up with all of his acquaintances... sending out birthday cards and trying to get in touch with friends from his childhood. Reminded me of my attempt I described in my last post, but I don't really have any of the other qualitifes of a connector. For an example, Gladwell had a sort of quiz he would use to quickly identify such people. He had a list of 250 last names, randomly drawn from the Manhattan phone book. He would ask the person to go through the list and count the number of people he/she was acquainted with that had a last name in the list. If the count exceeded say 50, the person was most likely a connector. I don't think I counted more than a dozen.
My dad just emailed me an MP3 recording of a voice mail that my physician's office left me at home. Another cool feature of VOIP I guess. I logged onto their website to confirm my appointment and I find out that I can view the lab results of my blood tests. Also cool. I don't know which surprises me more: seeing these features come around or the fact that it hasn't happened earlier. With Internet reaching 75% penetration in US homes, maybe we're approaching a tipping point in the market of bringing household activities online :)
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